Home > Bob Bemer

Born in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, Bemer graduated from Cranbrook Academy in 1936 and took an A.B. in Mathematics at Albion College in 1940. He earned a Certificate in Aeronautical Engineering at Curtiss-Wright Technical Institute in 1941.

He began his career as an aerodynamicist at Douglas Aircraft Company in 1941 then worked for RAND Corporation from 1951Events January events January 9 United Nations headquarters officially opens ( New York City). January 15 Ilse Koch, The "Witch of Buchenwald," wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment in a court in We, IBM from 1957Events January January 2 San Francisco and Los Angeles stock exchanges merge. January 3 Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch January 4 After 69 years the last issue of Colliers magazine is published January 5 Russell Endean becomes t, and HoneywellHoneywell is a major American multinational corporation that produces electronic control systems and automation equipment. It is a major supplier of engineering services and avionics for NASA Boeing and the United States Department of Defense. The company from 19741974 is a common year starting on Tuesday (click on link for calendar). Events January-February January 5 Dungeons & Dragons officially released. February 4 Patricia Hearst, the 19 year old granddaughter of publisher William Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped. He also worked for UnivacUnivac began as the "business" computer division of Remington Rand formed by the purchase of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1950. Univac® Sperry Rand label In 1953 or 1954 Remington Rand merged their tabulating machine division in Norwalk, Con.

He served on the committee which amalgamated the design for his COMTRAN language with Grace HopperRear Admiral Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (born Grace Brewster Murray ( December 9, 1906 January 1, 1992) was an early computer programmer and the developer of the first compiler for a computer programming language. The compiler was known as the A compile's FLOW-MATICFLOW-MATIC Originally B-0, and possibly the first English-like Data Processing language. It was invented and specified by Grace Hopper, and development of the commercial variant started at Remington Rand in 1955 for the UNIVAC I. By 1958, the compiler and and thus produced the specifications for COBOLCOBOL is a second-generation programming language. Its name is an acronym, for CO mmon B usiness O riented L anguage defining its primary domain in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments. Prehistory and specification C. He also served on the separate committee which defined the ASCII character codeset in 1960, contributing several character s which had not previously been used by computers including the ESCape character, the backslash character, and the curly bracket characters. As a result he is sometimes known as The Father of ASCII.

Other notable contributions to computing include the first publication of the time-sharing concept and the first attempts to prepare for the Year 2000 problem in publications as early as 1971.

Bemer died at Possum Kingdom Lake, Texas , after a battle with cancer.